Free Republic

SHHH, MR. PRESIDENT Because I have been on an extended road trip, I haven’t followed the news as closely as I might “They don’t call it a multi-state killing spree for nothing” — The Couch). But from the broad brushstrokes I take it that the president is just crushing it. Everything is falling into place. He had to send Joe Biden off to Office Depot to get more notepads because he’s checking off everything on his to-do lists so quickly. (Biden came back with a ten-gallon jug of Elmer’s glue, some pink-unicorn duct tape, and an office chair he won’t...

....Obama is pitching his ideas to boost the American middle class in Minnesota, a state that already has embraced a key component of the president's economic agenda by moving to raise its minimum wage....

“WHY is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” America’s cerebral president betrayed a rare flash of frustration on April 28th when dealing with a question in Asia about his country’s “weakness”. Barack Obama said his administration was making steady, if unspectacular, progress. By blundering into wars, his critics would only harm America. Mr Obama was channelling the mood of his people, worn out by the blood and treasure squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. A survey last autumn by the Pew Research Centre suggests that 52% want the United States to “mind its own business internationally”, the...

For running commentary on Russia and the vote in Crimea, you might want to follow chess champion turned democracy activist Garry Kasparov: @Kasparov63. Tonight, amid his usual barrage of criticism leveled at Vladimir Putin, he’s turning his fire on President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

There may be no way for the United States to reverse the Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The Obama administration still has the opportunity to send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin to punish Moscow for this aggression in response to the ouster of one of their stooge in Kiev by a popular uprising. Indeed, he would do well to listen to the advice of Senator Marco Rubio who outlined eight steps the U.S. should take in response to the crisis. But whether or not the president acts appropriately now, it’s probably too late to preserve the...

As the Obama Decline brings American prosperity and might to ever-lower depths, we now hear that the administration has decided to reduce the size of U.S. armed forces to pre-World War II levels. If was, of course, precisely those levels that led to World War II. The great lesson of that horrific war – that American weakness leads to global instability – has either been forgotten or is being replicated. In the name of cutting budgets, an administration that has doubled our national debt chooses now to endanger both our national security and the world order. The same White House...

On the eve of his annual State of the Union address, Barack Obama’s five years as president have brought innumerable national security failures. However, beyond the long, growing list of ideologically driven errors, missed opportunities and generally inattentive stewardship of foreign and defense issues is a larger problem. National security is simply not a top Obama administration priority.

A common reason for failure is confusing self-control with willpower. We imagine that by applying enough willpower, things will fall in place. However, those who continue in sin know that their willpower is no match for the battle. This being the New Year, resolutions abound. Though our intentions may be sincere our ability to follow through is pitifully weak. We find that we are unable to drive sin from our lives. Our weakness reveals itself ceaselessly. Willpower is not the source of self-control. My own struggle with lust and the things I have learned as a result of gaining victory...

There is a line in the Letter to the Hebrews which reads: You made [Jesus] for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, subjecting all things under his feet.” In “subjecting” all things (to him), he left nothing not “subject to him.” Yet at present we do not see “all things subject to him,” but we do see Jesus “crowned with glory and honor” because he suffered death, (Heb 2:7-9) Now this text is clear about two things. First, All things are subject to Jesus. Second, we do not presently see or experience...

I can picture Vlad Putin, a guy who poses bare-chested with a freshly killed tiger, having this Pajamaboy tweet shown to him in a threat matrix briefing. You know what he's thinking? "Oh yeah. No way he'd counter-launch. It's go-time."

Unable to ignore millions of cancellation letters and a rare presidential apology, fact-checkers at PolitiFact and the Washington Post designated “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” as their “Lie of the Year.” Reeling from Obamacare’s deceptive sales tactics, Americans dread its fallout but know that our system allows us to Think Again. We can repeal and replace bad laws. But we can’t reverse the fall-out from Iranian nukes, which explains President Kennedy’s warning that while “domestic policy can defeat us, foreign policy can kill us.” It also explains the backlash from allies and Congress against...

Barack Obama, resolute enough when he’s designing health care schemes, shows only irresolution abroad. Weakness and irresolution is the face he turns to the rest of the world, in hopes that if he hires a good speechwriter and bows deeply enough to whatever kings and potentates cross his path, that’s good enough. But of course it isn’t, and Mr. Obama is challenged now at every turn by friend and foe of the United States who need to see on what meat the man feeds, and of what stuff his promises and assurances are made. The mullahs in Tehran, who can’t...

American wariness of foreign military involvement is making it seem “weak and retreating,” warned the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman. “Make no mistake about it. If what we are seeing now is the beginning of a deep change in American foreign policy, it will be bad for the Jews,” said Foxman, the ADL’s national director, at a conference Thursday marking the group’s 100th anniversary in New York. …

“You don’t need to be buddies with someone to establish an effective relationship,” said Mr. Burns, who now teaches at Harvard. “Not everyone can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the Second World War.” Even with friends, however, there is tension. President François Hollande of France was initially thrilled with Mr. Obama because he saw him as an ally against Ms. Merkel on economic issues.

... Obama is set to lay out his vision for advancing toward a world free of nuclear weapons during a speech Wednesday at the historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. A senior administration official says Mr. Obama will propose the United States and Russia cut their number of strategic nuclear warheads by up to one third below the level agreed to in a 2009 treaty. That pact, called the New START agreement, calls for the two countries to reduce their arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads by 2018.

“If Pyongyang thought its recent threats would drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States or somehow garner the North international respect, today is further evidence that North Korea has failed again,” Obama said during a joint press conference with the two leaders. “The United States and the Republic of Korea are as united as ever … North Korea is more isolated than ever.” Obama said North Korea’s manufactured crises will no long elicit concessions and committed to protecting the United States and its allies.

The Obama administration says China is increasingly frustrated by the provocative actions of North Korea and Secretary of State John Kerry will try to convince leaders in Beijing that Pyongyang is, as one senior administration official said, “putting China’s own interests at risk.” Briefing reporters on Kerry’s plane as he flew from London to the first stop on his four-day Asian tour, that official and a senior State Department official said the administration is urging China to use its leverage with the North “otherwise it is very destabilizing.” Specifically, the officials said the United States wants Beijing to “stop the...

Bring up Iraq -- and expect to end up in an argument. Conservatives are no different from liberals in rehashing the unpopular war, which has become a sort of whipping boy for all our subsequent problems. The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently enumerated countless pathologies that followed Iraq. Yet to examine her list is to learn just how misinformed we have become in our anguish over the intervention. Noonan writes of Republicans: "It [Iraq] ruined the party's hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity. They started a war and didn't win it." We can argue over whether the result...

It’s difficult to not look at world events these days and feel as though we are sitting on a ticking time bomb. Things are heating up even more and the clock is now at about 30 seconds to midnight. One wonders where all this will lead… Well, if the current course is kept, straight into hell, probably. That is by design and has been planned on for a very long time.

TEHRAN, Iran — Five Iranian officials who were held in Iraq for more than two years by U.S. forces on suspicion of aiding local Shiite militants returned to Iran Sunday, where the Iranian foreign minister hailed their return as a victory for Iran. The five diplomats flew to Tehran from Iraq on Sunday and were met at the airport by a cheering crowd of onlookers who carried the men on their shoulders and put garlands of flowers around their necks. Iran's Foreign Minster Manouchehr Mottaki in a news conference with the men that was carried by Iran's Press-TV minutes after...